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Hooters Air flights in Pinellas to end

The airline stops selling tickets for late April from the airport a few months after slashing its schedule.

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published March 16, 2006

Hooters Air apparently will depart the Tampa Bay area for good next month.

An affiliate of the restaurant chain built on chicken wings and a wait staff in tank tops and tight shorts, Hooters Air has stopped selling flights at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport after April 17.

Airport director Noah Lagos said Hooters Air president Mark Peterson told him Friday that the airline hadn't decided on continuing its four weekly round trips to Allentown, Pa.

But an Allentown airport executive e-mailed him that the airline was ending the flights next month and calling passengers with the news.

"It appears Hooters Air is leaving our market," said Lagos. "They're looking at what markets they serve and I think they're trying to figure out if they're going to stay in business or not."

Peterson did not return a telephone call Wednesday to the airline's Myrtle Beach, S.C., headquarters for comment.

But Hooters Air has struggled since last summer with problems plaguing the entire airline industry: sky-high fuel costs and low air fares.

The carrier slashed its schedule in January, including three nonstop destinations from St. Petersburg: Columbus, Ohio; Gary, Ind.; and Rockford, Ill.

Hooters Air called the changes at Columbus and Gary "seasonal adjustments" and pledged to resume the flights this month, but hasn't so far. Last week, airport officials in Scranton, Pa., said the airline was canceling flights to St. Petersburg and Fort Lauderdale.

The tiny airline attracted super-sized publicity since its inaugural flight from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta in 2003 and again locally upon landing in St. Petersburg.

Two Hooters girls dressed in the same skimpy outfits as at restaurants serve food and play trivia games with passengers on each flight. Boarding passes are tucked inside replica restaurant menus and the Hooters logo adorns the side of each plane.

Hooters Air is owned by Robert Brooks, chairman of Atlanta-based Hooters of America, which bought trademark and franchise licensing rights from the restaurant's original Clearwater owners.

Brooks has said he could write off modest losses as a marketing expense for the nearly 400 Hooters his company owns or franchises worldwide.

Hooters Air was filling planes at the St. Petersburg airport and getting good fares - mostly from $129 to $189 one-way to Allentown and back, said Lagos.

But the industry's financial woes have landed particularly hard on the smallest carriers. Largo-based Southeast Airlines, a major player at the local airport, went under at the end of 2004.

The airport's biggest carrier, ATA, filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and left St. Petersburg the following year.

Hooters Air's departure wouldn't hurt as badly. For the first two months of 2006, the airline flew 4,310 passengers - just over 6 percent of the airport's total of nearly 67,000.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or 813 226-3384.

[Last modified March 16, 2006, 02:00:27]